If You Cannot Hear My Voice
by Hito
Summary: PamRoy, PamJim. After you're gone: Everything's the same, everything's changed. Post episode 303, 900 words.


Author's note: Not mine. Ricky's? NBC's? Definitely not mine.

---

It feels like she's cheating.

She knows it's stupid. She tells the camera and the cameramen that it's stupid.

She knows. It's not like she doesn't know.

---

He comes to see her at every possible opportunity. At lunch, at every non-union break he's allowed, at every five minute interval he can scrape from his day.

He comes to see her. It's an effort.

She knows. It matters.

---

She ignores it for a while. She's made her decision. It was difficult and it took her too long. She's not going to backtrack.

She's smarter than that.

She doesn't feel smarter than that, but she knows she's an underachiever and she wants to change.

Things have changed. She can change too.

---

She goes on three dates with three different men and counts that an achievement.

Kelly is disappointed with her because she hasn't put out.

Pam considers that the opposite of the purpose of dating.

---

And: Yet. She hasn't put out yet.

---

She's on her fourth date with her fourth guy when Ryan says, "And I heard Jim's new girl's really hot."

Pam's sure he said something that lead up to that, but that's when she started listening.

Kelly makes a face at Ryan, but it's nothing compared to the face Pam has just made in her imagination. If things were the same, Pam'd dare Kelly to put her weird face up against Pam's weird face.

Pam's sure she'd win in a face-off.

But things aren't the same, and Pam smiles.

---

Pam thinks about Jim. She thinks about things and then she thinks about Jim, and it takes up too much of her brain and her time.

He lives in a different state now.

He didn't tell her it was a bad idea for them to get involved; he didn't tell her she was engaged, or that he wasn't into her like that; he didn't tell her anything.

He applied for a new job and moved states. That's something. That's something that sticks.

Pam needs to change and she needs to make it stick.

---

She's not happy.

She wasn't happy before so she changed her life and now she's even more not happy.

It was supposed to work. She doesn't know how to make it work.

---

Jan comes up and smarms at Michael alone in his office for an hour.

Pam watches because she has nothing else to do.

When Jan finishes she stops to speak to Pam.

"Hi, Pam," she says. "How are you doing?"

Pam manages to expel a useless response.

"You've been getting great reports," Jan tells her.

Pam knows Michael's been giving her fabulous reports: she's been writing them herself.

"You should think about applying for a job in another office." Jan gives her a blinding smile before breezing out.

Pam ignores her pending layoff and Michael's suspicious squint and goes back to computer solitaire.

---

Jim's doing well.

She can't avoid the news. Kelly won't let her.

She wants to avoid the news.

Roy brings her a tuna sandwich at lunchtime. She doesn't particularly like tuna, but she once told Roy that she did. She thanks him and throws it in the trash.

---

She doesn't think she can stay like this.

She hasn't been alone since high school. She doesn't begin to know how to be alone. She wasn't supposed to have to know how.

She'd never really imagined this. She'd made a decision and Roy had come into work seventeen minutes later and she'd informed him of her decision and felt vaguely surprised as she'd watched his face crumple.

But while she hadn't been imagining anything, she hadn't been imagining this.

---

It's too long a time before Michael tells her Jim is returning for an afternoon, for a conference.

Pam feels herself light up and prays nobody notices.

She has to work here.

Then Michael tells her Jim's not coming alone, gives her a name and a hip movement that's meant to be erotic.

Pam feels her face curdle.

---

She eats lunch alone at her desk that afternoon, considering her situation.

This is entirely beyond her experience: she hadn't imagined this and she can't imagine her next step.

She doesn't know what to do, but she knows that her hand is a losing one and she needs a change.

She's never felt like this and she needs the feeling to stop.

---

Roy had brought her ham that afternoon and she'd eaten half the sandwich while planning her change.

It's past closing time and they're the only two people left in the building.

Her boss, her colleagues, the cameras; everything is gone, everything but the rock of Roy's hips into hers.

Pam claws at the cardboard Roy has her pressed against, clutches the boxes of blank paper, the boxes of nothing she's devoting her life to, opens her mouth in abandon as she feels the rush and lets Roy dig his nails into her skin until it hurts too much, lets him clutch her to something that exists.

---

It's nine days before she sees him again.

She's let Roy fill her emptiness again and Jim has come alone.

She doesn't meet his eyes at first. She can't: she feels like she's cheating and the shame is burying her alive.

But she's confused because she's not sure who she can be cheating on while she's single.

So she lifts her eyes and meets his clear, blank gaze.

End.


End file.
